My Little Secret
by Just Lovely
Summary: AU. He knew her like she was a part of him. She knew him like she knew everyone, except better.  Birthday!fic for xfucktheglasses


**Disclaimer:** not mine

_Dedication:_ to les (xfucktheglasses) and her birthday. Happy birthday and I hope it's full of glitter and fun!

_My Little Secret_

**By:_ Just Lovely._**

_it was a pretty thing,_

_like the backs of their hands,_

_it was a light feeling,_

_like_ flying.

He knew her like she was a part of him. She knew him like she knew everyone, except better.

.x.x.x_

It didn't start that way though.

Part 1.

He was seven and she was five when they met, him pushing her down from the monkey bars.

Not fun.

She cried, pink hair sticking to her face with sweat and salty tears, one arm hanging limply while he just regarded her coolly from up top.

Her mother came and swept her up into her arms, soft kisses and soothing caresses as her sobs quieted to hiccups. His nanny followed suite and took him away from the scene, pulling at his small, pale hand.

He looked back at her, dark eyes flashing with an uncertain emotion.

He found out he had broken her arm and was going to 'help' to speed up her recovery.

Sure.

He sat there, by her bedside, bored out of his mind. Her green eye opened and then the other one, regarding him with a strong sense of hatred.

"You made me bweak my awm." she accused, her squeaky voice loud and hurtful.

"I didn't do it. You just _fell_." his voice was low for a little boy his age.

"I did not." she rejected haughtily, "You _pushed_ me."

"You were hallucinating because of the heat." he said, a five syllable word tumbling from his little boy mouth.

"Hallu-halu-snating? What?"

"_Hallucinating_. It means you were imagining things." he looked at her confused expression and sighed, "Y'know, 'pretty pictures and rainbow colours'."

"O-oh! You mean dweamland."

"...sure."

"Did you go to dweamland too?"

"...sure. I saw unicorns and pretty castles too." his voice was sarcastic, odd compared to his age.

"Me too!"

"Maybe I should get you some water." he said and exited the room.

She was crazy.

He didn't come back until the end of the week when he was just slightly sure she wouldn't be so insane in the head.

"Wheye you go? You didn't come back." she was still lying in her bed, pink tresses everywhere, her cheeks rosy and her arm in a cast. He felt a little guilty.

"I was...busy." it was just a little white lie, because the last thing he needed was for her to start crying and getting him in trouble again.

"Aw you gonna stay 'dis time?"

"Yeah."

And she took his hand into hers and pulled him up onto the bed right up beside her.

He was warm.

He squirmed in the bed and tried to get away from her, a flash of disgust on his face.

Ew, girl cooties.

She didn't seem to notice though, that or she didn't mind that she would be infected with his cooties, he concluded.

"W'as your name?"

He looked at her, a little surprised. "Uchiha Sasuke." he said quietly and waited for the expected intake of breath that usually came with the utterance of his well known sur name. None came.

"I'm Hawuno Sakuwa." she smiled at him, cheeky with the dimples.

She couldn't even pronounce her own name right, he scoffed.

How infected with cooties was she?

.x.x.x_

And that's how it started.

Part 2.

He was eleven and she was nine when _something_ formed between them.

Well, more like her crashing into him but, it was what happened after that counter.

She quite literally hit him in the playground and he stumbled to regain his balance as a frown formed on his lips as his friends sent him curious glances.

"Sakura." he stated, annoyed. "What?"

And it was at that moment when her face turned up to his, childish and blotchy, tears welling in her eyes; that he was at a complete dead end as to what to do. She was crying.

"What's wrong?" Sasuke asked, voice awkward and unused to crying girls.

She was crying and it didn't seem like she was going to stop. He sighed, running a hand through dark hair -a habit from his elder brother- as he glanced around him, for a 'big kid', a teacher, someone, _anyone_ who could deal with this because he was a little boy who didn't know what to do when it came to girls and crying.

He spotted them over her messy pink ribboned hair, a group of five or six kids, probably her age, he assumed and gestured them over; missing the sly smirks and 'I-found-her' glances they sent each other.

"Sakura, look. Your friends are coming over."

She glanced over at them and a little moan escaped her lips.

"Aw, Sakura-chan! I found you, now c'mon, let's go play again." one of the girls said and snatched Sakura's wrist in a tight grip. A knowing threat stuck onto the air and Sakura was powerless as Sasuke urged her away from him and the insults and bullying recommenced as they moved her out of his earshot.

It went on for a few more days and Sasuke was oblivious to it all until she hurdled herself into him again, face blotchy and tearful, pink hair messy and with uneven lengths. He noticed the purple, yellow and black marks that littered her arms. He didn't care that his friends were appalled at her appearance but he'd be damned if he left her at those bullies' mercy again.

So he kept her by him and no one seemed to have a problem with her after then. But bullies were known to be persistent so he went to the one person that he could count on: big brother.

Itachi studied in his room after school, before school, in between meals, on weekends. He was a seventeen-year-old prodigy who had a -as close as could be- perfect family. Which was why he was startled when his little brother entered his room, stoney-faced and disturbed.

"Little brother...to what do I owe the pleasure for your visit?" he greeted, his voice so similar to that of their father, Uchiha Fugaku.

"I...need your help with something." the little boy replied, ignoring his brother's greeting. And it was as Itachi regarded his brother that something was troubling him, nothing troubled Sasuke and Itachi was suddenly alerted as he listened intently to his little brother's story.

"Bullies? At your school, that's absurd."

"But it's true, you have to help me." Sasuke pleaded and Itachi wondered just how important it was to Sasuke to get so worked up about it when it didn't affect him in any way.

He heaved a sigh and blinked tired eyes, "You need to stand up for her then, if she doesn't, back her up. Go to the teacher if you have to alright, Sasuke.?" he said and pinched the bridge of his nose as he regarded Sasuke carefully.

And that's exactly what eleven-year-old Sasuke did. He encouraged Sakura, he pushed and urged her and when she started to slip, he was there to back her up. And as things came to the worst, he went to the high faculties.

Bullying wasn't something that Sasuke took a care in, unless it involved him, because then, he was going to be a scary little kid. No one threatened him or that little pink haired girl and got away with it.

.x.x.x_

She always repaid her debts though.

Part 3.

He was nineteen and she was seventeen when everything just became different.

That, or they finally reached the feelings and emotions stage.

Sasuke was in a relationship...with a girl that Sakura really didn't like. It wasn't even a relationship, more like a love and a hate. Sasuke was a little dumb, a man with confused feelings, who was practically love-obsessed with a girl that just used him. And Sakura saw that quite easily.

That girl, yes she was 'that' kind of a girl. The ones with the cash to back her up, the glitz, the glamour, the body, the reputation that made her known. She was 'that' girl and she quite easily made Sakura want to punch the plastic in.

It was sort of that day, that time, that precise moment where everything but him were in place that it happened, although she didn't regret the action, she certainly regretted the aftermath of it all.

"What the hell is your problem Sakura?" he yelled at her and all Sakura could feel at that moment was adrenaline in her veins and what he was so damn obsessed with the Paris Hilton carbon copy who clutched her fake nose in a delicate hand.

"Her." she answered, staring right at his angry and confused eyes that widened at the unexpected response.

"And this is how you repay me huh. After all I've done, you can't even feel a little happiness for me."

Sakura didn't bother to respond, knowing it had already escalated far too high to bring it back down again. She blankly watched him and his fake girlfriend leave, feeling almost sorry, but not quite, her debt was repaid and it was up to him to get to the exit before it closed up and he was stuck again.

She sure hoped he did because she really didn't like fighting with him.

"You were right." he uttered at her doorstep a few weeks later. He sounded broken and he looked like a mess, bagged eyes and wrinkled clothing, pale and lifeless.

She let him in, as if nothing had happened weeks before.

"It's just a heartbreak. You'll know better next time, you'll see the signs."

Sasuke didn't say anything, letting her words sink into his blank mind as he sank into the couch in her living room. "How would you know?" he asked after a few minutes, dark eyes clashing with green.

"I just do. So tell me what happened."

Despite her vague answer which seemed to say more if he just read between the lines, he felt himself say more than he had intended, say things that hadn't yet processed. And she listened, quiet and patient. Just like he had with her, always there to pick up the pieces, always there with the right words and the right, _everything_.

"Our positions seemed to be switched." she stated, a small smile on her lips as she looked carefully at him.

"Hn." he smirked wryly, thin and it was just the beginning of a 'something' more.

.x.x.x_

They know each other like the backs of their hands. Frail, intricate and full of secrets.

Part 4.

He was twenty-eight and she was twenty-six when everything became a routine.

Or maybe it was just _instinct_ by now.

He was so much older, wiser, more serious, more mature. She wasn't any different. But it was still the same.

Sasuke had his social life/relationships/whatever and when problems arose, she always ran over the creases and made it better.

Sakura had her own problems, although this time around, she didn't let him step in.

Vice versa and he was in her debt now.

She sat on the couch, white sleeved arms wrapped around raised knees. Pink hair a curtain around her head but he could still hear her soft sobs and the tears that were surely running down her cheeks.

He was there, quiet, as he sat down beside her.

"How do you do it?" she whispered, voice shaky and weak.

"Do what, Sakura?"

"Just keep going on, like nothing's going to go wrong and everything's bright and peachy." she sounded bitter to his ears.

"I...just think about everyone else. What they would say, what they would think."

"You're so unselfish, it's annoying." her voice was clearer to him now as green eyes peeked at him from behind an arm. He felt a little bit light.

"That's annoying? What about my last year in high school, you know, when I asked you if I should take that business course. You said 'no', I did it anyway and look where that got me now. One of the greatest business men in the company. And to think that if I had listened to you, I probably would have been a _janitor_ or something."

Her green eyes looked at him weirdly, widened with an appalled surprise. "I think that's the most you've ever said in one go."

He rolled his eyes at her apparent amusement, "That's not the _point_, Sakura. The point i-"

"All I hear is 'blah, blah, blah'." she said, making a mouth gesture with one hand, her eyes bright with mirth and a smile on her lips. "All I want to hear are some 'details' about that date. So...?"

Sasuke ran a hand through his hair, slightly flustered.

Here we go again.

Night fell, it was pitch black in their apartment. She sat curled up to his chest, his arms around her, their faces just inches apart; their routines always closed with those bliss moments, but it wasn't like it would come true when they never acted on their true feelings.

It was those little moments.

* * *

Review?


End file.
